Best Paper for the period 2008-2011

The U.V. Helava Award, one of the most prestigious ISPRS awards, was established in 1998 and first presented in 2000 to encourage and stimulate submission of high quality scientific papers by individual authors or groups to the ISPRS Journal, to promote and advertise the Journal, and to honour the outstanding contributions of Dr. Uuno V. Helava, a leading photogrammetrist and developer of analytical and digital systems, to research and development in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. The Award is presented to authors of the best paper published exclusively in the ISPRS Journal during the four-year period from January of a Congress year to December of the year prior to the next Congress. The recipients of the Award may receive it only once.

The award consists of a monetary grant of 10,000 SFr., certificates and a silver plaque. It is sponsored by Elsevier B.V. and Hexagon Geosystems, while the Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing of the Aalto University, Finland, paid half the costs for the silver plaque. The plaque was designed with care and enthusiasm by the 1980-88 ISPRS Technical Commission III President, Einari Kilpelä, previously professor at the Helsinki University of Technology.

A five-member jury, comprising experts of high scientific standing, whose expertise covers the main topics included in the scope of the Journal, evaluated 261 papers for the period 2008-2011. For each year of the four-year evaluation period, the Best Paper was selected and has been announced in the ISPRS Journal, ISPRS Newsletter, and on the websites of ISPRS and Elsevier. From these four papers, the one to receive the U.V. Helava Award was selected. The award winning paper is

The paper reports on joint work on a sophisticated system to detect and track pedestrians from moving vehicles. It combines close-range photogrammetry of dynamic scenes and automatic image understanding. The topic is highly relevant for ground based navigation systems. The objective, namely to have a real time interpretation system, is challenging. The paper gives insight into the different modules and presents an impressive quantitative evaluation. It is well organized, interesting, and easy to read.

The U.V. Helava Award will be presented at the Opening Session of the 22nd ISPRS Congress on 25 August in Melbourne, by Orhan Altan, ISPRS President, and representatives of the sponsors.

On behalf of the ISPRS and the U.V. Helava Award jury, I would like to congratulate the authors for this distinction and thank them for their contribution. I would also like to thank the sponsors of the Award, and especially the jury members for their thorough evaluations of all papers published in the last four years.